After clearing two state troopers and a sheriff’s deputy of responsibility in the 2018 death of a handcuffed man, state Attorney General Letitia James on Friday recommended state police begin using body cameras.

Had the troopers involved in the May 20, 2018, incident been wearing cameras, James wrote in a 50-page report, “a more complete picture of everything that transpired during this incident would have taken shape.”

James' report was issued eight days after a state trooper fatally shot an unarmed man on Interstate 84 in Orange County. That case, which remains under investigation by the Attorney General's Office, was not mentioned in the report.

The report focused on the death of Robert L. Scott, 58, in Lyons, N.Y., about 45 miles east of Rochester. Scott died after being handcuffed by troopers who were investigating a report of a fight where he was staying with a woman.

A medical examiner in Wayne County ruled Scott's death was caused by acute cocaine intoxication, with cardiovascular disease as a contributing factor. James' report said the death was not the result of Scott being restrained by law-enforcement personnel.

Still, the report said, “the [Office of the Attorney General] takes this opportunity to recommend that the NYSP seek the necessary funding to implement a body-worn camera program. The NYSP generally employs between 4,600 and 5,200 members; it is the second largest law-enforcement agency in New York and the ninth largest in the nation. Yet, of the twenty largest law-enforcement agencies in this country, the NYSP bears the distinction of being the only agency not outfitting its members with body-worn cameras or piloting a plan to do so.”

According to James, as recently as October 2018, New York State Police officials said they had no plans to implement such a program, citing its “prohibitive cost.”

Many agencies, including state police and the Kingston Police Department, have dashboard cameras in their patrol cars.

In the Orange County case, Luke H. Patterson, 41, of Tannersville, was fatally shot about 2 a.m. May 23 between Exits 5 and 5A of I-84 in the town of Montgomery.

State police said a trooper fired his service weapon more than once at Patterson as he tried to get into a state police cruiser being driven slowly by the trooper's partner.

The shooting happened after the troopers, whose names have not been made public, responded to reports of a disabled vehicle in the westbound lanes of I-84, and of a man, who turned out to be the vehicle's driver, walking along the westbound shoulder of the highway.

The troopers found Patterson about half a mile from the disabled vehicle, and one of them got out of the cruiser to speak with him, while the other drove beside them, police said.

Maj. Pierce Gallagher, commander of state police Troop F, said at a press conference that Patterson was not cooperative and refused to comply with several commands, and that when Patterson made a movement to get into the troopers' car, the trooper who was outside the vehicle shot him.

Patterson was pronounced dead at a hospital soon after. Gallagher has said no weapon was found on him.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order in 2015 requiring the attorney general to investigate all deaths of unarmed civilians by law enforcement in the state.

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Diane Pineiro-Zucker has been a reporter at the Daily Freeman since April 2013. Pineiro-Zucker worked as a reporter in the Freeman’s Rhinebeck bureau in the early 1980s, left to become executive editor at Taconic Newspapers in Dutchess County.